Media and other content is often delivered to requesting devices (e.g., mobile or other user devices) over a network via or from network edge caches. Typically, a content provider or other network component utilizes cache controllers and associated algorithms to determine the content delivered to user devices that should be cached, such as content that is predicted to be popular, viral, and/or often requested by user devices. Therefore, when a user device requests delivery of a popular piece of content, the content provider, via the network edge cache, is able to quickly respond and deliver the requested content to the user device from the network edge cache that is proximate to the requesting user device.
In some cases, content may also be cached at the endpoints of a network, such as within local storage of a user equipment terminal device (e.g., a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet, a laptop, and so on). Such device caching may also enable quick delivery of requested content.
Many user devices include and support a varied suite of mobile applications, or “apps,” enabling users to download and install many different applications to their user devices and likely leading to a unique combination of applications on each user device. The different applications, some of which include components configured to present content to users, may have different or custom online content interfaces and retrieval/delivery protocols. Additionally, the applications may request for and receive content (e.g., video content, audio content, and so on) from various different online, networked, and/or remote content sources, such as content delivery networks (CDNs), remote content servers, remote content storage sites, and so on.
Such unique, user specific combinations of applications on user devices reflect unique application environments for every user, but an unlimited number of varying application combinations may prevent employing device caching techniques to quickly provide content to the user devices, as a typical caching client may only serve device cached content to the few applications capable of having their business logic modified to support the caching client's operations.